Thursday, September 3, 2009

Why I’ll Never Buy Another Sears Kenmore Appliance

So… a few years back we decided that our Sears Kenmore washer and dryer of 20 years should be replaced. Both had been real work horses. I grew up with good old Sears Kenmore appliances and so did my wife. So we bought a new Kenmore washer, dryer plus a fridge.

The fridge broke after five years. I called Sears for service and it was going to be 5 days before they could get someone out to look at it with a charge of $175 for the visit. I looked in the phone book, called a local guy who was there in 30 minutes. He replaced the broken part and the fridge was running again. Cost $80. He told me that the part that failed was cheap and not meant to last very long. He replaced it with a much better heavy duty part.

Then a year or so later the drum on the washer went out. The repair guy told us it was our fault because we must had been using too much soap. Yeah right… My wife uses low sudsing soap, as recommended by Kenmore. Although the part was covered under the warranty the repair cost wasn’t – chalk up another $400. Now three years later the drum is broken AGAIN. I’m not even going to try to repair it. We are going to get another washer and it won’t be from Sears and it won’t be a Kenmore.

We aren’t going to buy a Kenmore just from our experiences, but I’ve talked to friends and co-workers and I’ve heard very similar Kenmore horror stories. I guess this is just an example of another good old American name that isn’t worth a darn anymore.

3 comments:

Yeah, based on Kenmore's OLD name for reliability we also replaced a top loading washer and dryer with a Kenmore front loader. The washer has been nothing but trouble. For us the cost effective way to keep it running was to pay the hundred dollar/year service fee. We've tried to pay it only when we need a fix but we've had it for 3 of the 5 years we've owned the washer. So our 700 dollar washer has costed >$1000. that doesn't include the 6 weeks last year when part after part was ordered for the washer (non of them worked) and we were forced to do our laundry at the laundry mat. The fridge has been less expensive because I've become very good and dismantling it manually to defrost it. I've done that about 10 times since we bought it. I've got the whole procedure down to about 3 hours.

All in all, I can't shake the feeling that Sears is addicted to the bad profits of their service business and they have stopped investing in the thing that made them successful - quality products.

I just talked to someone from the service department. No joy. I told them I was done unless they could fix it; they decided that my future business wasn't worth their investment. So good buy sears CC. No more tools from Sears either I'll go to Home Depot. No clothes for me or the kids or the wife, we'll go Kohl's. No Lands End (really bummed about that one). No jewelry, or electronics. No Camping supplies or exercise equipment.

BTW, just to be fair. My Kenmore microwave has been fine. No trouble at all.

We ended up getting a slightly used washer off of Craig's list. It has been working just fine. Saved a lot of money as well. Been looking for a new frig lately. Needless to say we haven't set foot in the local Sears. While I'd perfer to buy American, just can't when the product is crap.